Got Some Dark Desire?
by Trin2
Summary: Percy Weasley really wants to grow up. Unfortunately, he already has. Sometimes things don't turn out the way you want them to.


Something I wrote very late at night on Percy. First time writing Percy. Be kind. Percy and I deserve better. R for language, oh my. 

Disclaimer: Harry Potter, et al, are property of J.K. Rowling. 

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Got Some Dark Desire?

Percy had been working in the Ministry of Magic for around a year, desperately poring over documents relating the exact thickness of cauldron bottoms and how they affected the potion brewed in them. He fielded letters from irate people complaining about poor quality stirring wands -- he took care to be extra snide to the letters he got from a man called Severus Snape who seemed to enjoy whining about Potion cauldrons. 

He took coffee breaks and hung around the pot that spewed out the sickly liquid, eyes glaring at anyone who dared to intrude on the only time he could be with the pot, alone, without anybody jostling him for more coffee.

Sometimes he would take off his glasses and rub the bridge of his nose and think: _My god, I'm turning into my father. _

He remembered that when he was a kid, he wanted to be an adult so badly. 

At seven he had acquired glasses so thick they made him look like he had nicked them from a grown man, and carried thick books under his arm, cultivating an air of studied intellectuality. It made him very happy that people said he looked older than his age. _Percy, you know, he's so mature for a child_. It made him want to sing, but he didn't, because that would have been childish. 

Adults had a secret knowledge, _I've been there, done that_. But he couldn't quite figure out what they had done in the first place, where they had been. He wanted to go there, he wanted to know everything, he wanted the secret stuff that you sniff that makes you sniff imperiously at everything.

He'd met Ludo Bagman before, when he was nine, and he immediately knew that some people weren't privy to such knowledge -- Ludo was inane and childish and immature. Ludo was exempt, he wasn't an adult, he was a child in a body growing old. Percy wanted to be an Adult.

But now he was honestly working, and was honestly considered an Adult, but he was still wondering if there was some stage that he hadn't known about -- was there some curtain you slid behind where a Fairy would turn you into an Adult? Was there some hooded Figure that came to you in your sleep and blew sand over your eyes, so that when you woke up you would see everything in a jaded green? He followed Mr. Crouch around for a while, with begging eyes: _Show me. Show me the knowledge. Please. _

Then Mr. Crouch had been demoted, and Percy stopped slavering after the way to be a proper Adult -- respected and organized, just like he'd wanted to be. He started waiting quietly in his bed, wide-awake, waiting for footsteps and the sprinkling of sand. It didn't happen. A few months passed, and he was promoted to a higher position. 

He didn't feel different. The excitement of the promotion lasted a few days, then wore off. He felt tired all the time. He felt like he could lie down and go to sleep and never wake up, because nobody would really miss him if he were gone. Another cog in the machine of the Ministry, the quiet people behind the curtain, carrying props, invisible; sweeping up the sequins and the expired glory of the performance before them. The wizards who weren't in the Ministry were the star act and the Ministry just tried to make sure everything ran properly. The performers were people like Harry Potter, acting out grand dramas of humanity on a stage that Muggles ignored.

Percy used to go for piano lessons, but they stopped after his parents had Fred and George and ran out of money. The instructor was a man shaped like a question mark -- hunched back, small dots of feet -- but on the piano bench he straightened up and suddenly became a rod, but he was still full of questions: _Have you practised your scales? Do you want to go for a piano examination? Did you do your Piano Theory homework? You're meant to play with more feeling, alright?_

When Percy had come to home with embarrassed, guilty eyes and told him that his family couldn't afford to pay for any more lessons, the man had straightened up, unfolding like a magician's scarf out of a sleeve and looked down at Percy's head with piercing, reproachful eyes. _You could have been a great pianist, Percy. You have the gift. You could have been a wizard of the piano._

At those words, Percy had flushed and suddenly hated his family with a burning ferocity -- damn their low income, damn their need for many children, damn them all! The he had felt guiltier than before, and trudged home with heavy feet, understanding the past tense used in that statement. Percy had the talent, but now that talent would die away with disuse. 

The man always referred the witches and wizards as magicians; he said all the magic they did were magician tricks, sleight of hand, compared to what _real _magic you could create on a musical instrument.

Percy would return home from his Ministry work and sit on the old, unused piano -- his parents were planning to sell it soon -- and put his head very close to the keys and play slowly, deliberately. _Fur Elise _came to him note by note. 

He remembered what his instructor had told him, but the words were fading. Something like _you could have been a great pianist_. The past tense; that chance for a different life is gone now, never to present itself again for Percy's eager hands. 

Then one night he came back to find a huge, gaping space where his piano had been. He hadn't made any sort of fuss. That would have been childish, immature and unnecessary. From the age of eight, Percy hadn't thrown any sort of tantrums like that. His parents didn't need things like that with people like Fred and George around.

In the middle of the night he came downstairs and took out glasses and filled them with varying amounts of water, and using a fork, _ting_-ed out tunes to the lyrics of: 

__

I fuck-ing hate my life. I fuck-ing hate my life.

Over and over again. Then he'd taken off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, and cleared up the glasses, cleaned them out and put them where they were. He'd switched off the lights. He padded upstairs and went back to sleep. 

He lay in his bed for a while, quietly desperate for something he couldn't articulate anymore. He wondered if his father felt like that as well, and then Percival Weasley fell asleep, hand hanging over the side of the too-small bed, balled into a uselessly violent fist, with nothing to hit at and nobody to blame but himself. 


End file.
